Flights halted at airports across US due to air traffic control communications problems

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded all flights nationwide Friday afternoon for just the second time since the 9/11 attacks, as officials cited "extraordinary circumstances" caused by communications problems at regional air traffic control centers. The nation's top homeland security official attributed the problem to a telecommunications outage and said there was no indication yet of a nefarious act. The consequences were profound, disrupting potentially thousands of planned flights thr